


v a  n   i     s     h

by lifeorbeth



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, GONE GIRL AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-04 00:10:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4119570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeorbeth/pseuds/lifeorbeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah and Beth's relationship had been on the rocks for a while. Moving from Toronto all but sealed the deal. Beth couldn't handle "the American dream," even if it meant that her girlfriend got to spend time with her ailing sister. But when Beth disappears - on Sarah's birthday, no less - all the evidence points to murder. And it all points to Sarah as the killer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	v a  n   i     s     h

Sarah Manning.

The Day Of.

 

* * *

 

 

When I think of my girlfriend, I always think of her hands. I think of all the things those hands have done: fired a gun, thrown punches, filled countless blanks on countless files, handcuffed, accented conversation, anything. Beth lives through her hands. But, of course, the most fascinating thing about her is her mind. And I can't help but wonder, all the time, what exactly goes on in that head of hers, in that interlocking web of thoughts and nerves and signals; I wish I could pick it apart, unwind it piece by piece, strand by strand. How many errant thoughts would I catch? How many things she'd never said?

I consider how many times I've wondered to myself, What are you thinking, Beth? And I've asked it - many, many times - sometimes aloud, and sometimes in the privacy of my own, much simpler mind. Every time I ask, I'm sure, I'm sure, she hears, she acknowledges, she knows. Yet still, an enigma she remains.

I wonder if we'll get married, if we'll ever come that far. I wonder if these same questions will continue to haunt us, perhaps growing thicker around us like a mist of unknowns: What are you thinking? How do you feel? Who are you? What will we do to each other? What have we already done?

 

It was six thirty on the dot when I woke. The suddenness of waking was enough to set me back without even considering the time; for this was no stumbling, tumbling, dragging oneself to awareness. No. This was the sudden I'm awake of a post-nightmare, though there was no pounding heart, no dread. Just a sudden, meaningless awakeness. The numbers on Beth's alarm clock (now reading 6-3-1) were the first things I saw, blinking at me from across the half-empty bed. I had to double-check the numbers, triple-check; I was never up this early, certainly never out of bed (let alone actually awake) before at least nine. And never, never did I wake at a perfect on-the-dot time like 6:30am.

The sun was already visible through the stylish-but-ineffective curtains - the sort of curtains that my girlfriend purchased to remember the days when money came easier, the sort of simple luxury. Or perhaps they were leftover. From before. She hated our house, though it was the sort of place I had never dared even to aspire to growing up: new, new, new, freshly built and freshly painted, clean and cool and spacious, windows that let in far too much light. See again that I called it "cool" and not "warm" - shouldn't a house be warm? That is to say, if it was a house. It's a townhouse, which should be close enough, but it really wasn't.

Once upon a time I could have pretended to be successful. Most of my success wasn't in the realm of legality, true, but it brought home an income. And when I was single, it was enough - more than enough, really. It was always fun, telling people that I was an actress on nights out, or that I was a waitress uptown, or that I was anything at all - because that's what I was: whatever people wanted me to be. And it was so, so easy. This town used to be packed with people who were easy-pickings, where ten grand would disappear from their accounts and they might not notice or they wouldn't know where to look. But then the business got tougher - more people getting their hands dirty, all the cons getting tangled like spools of yarn unwound and balled together, tossed into a dusty corner to be dealt with later. And it was dealt with. In the form of a monopoly, the kind of monopoly I did not want to partake in, the kind of monopoly that could have cost a girl like me her life. And so I vanished for a while. When I came back, hoping for a fresh start, a plan of attack, I was left with nothing. I had a life, a reality, an income, and then, just like that, I didn't.

I wallowed. I must admit that there was quite a bit of wallowing. But then there was a phone call, one that I wasn't expecting and couldn't dare predict. My twin sister on the other end. Cosima was across the continent, in another country at that, in a town, a city, I'd only visited once or twice on a whim. I was ready to leave, ready to pack my bags and never look back, not a second time, never again. And Cosima, stranded in a tiny apartment, no job to speak of (not that she wasn't qualified - she was the most qualified person I'd ever known; there was just a lot of bad luck in our family), was calling from this new and exotic and different place, and as I listened to her voice, I saw her as she must have been years ago: pale skinny kid with pale feet skimming the top of the baywater like ugly misshapen fish, a book held up to her nose, glasses pressed almost to the page. But of course it's not a memory; I didn't meet Cosima until we were adults. Identical twins, separated at birth, separated by an ocean, even. No real explanation for that one, but the difference in accent is always treated like a cool party trick, and I used it to my advantage whenever Cos and I were together.

Cos's voice was warm and comforting, sounding like the feel of that imaginary book from all those years ago - old, well-worn, plastic-coated cover crinkling with every movement, the pages soft on the edges from countless turning fingers. Even as she gave cold, bleak news: she was sick, dying by the looks of things. She had taken studious notes as the doctors recounted medicines and treatments and dosages, her scientist's handwriting not quite neat enough for even her to make out as she stumbled over what she'd written, recounting to me. Dates and doses and options, options, options. (All of them slim.)

Here was my purpose, my task, my excuse for living without work. I almost cried with relief at having found something, anything to replace the endless quiet, still days. "I'll go, Cos. We'll find a place and head out there. You shouldn't have to go through this alone."

She didn't believe me. Of course she didn't. Me always wanting to run away - of course that part was more than a little believable. And Beth, still, steady Beth, with her roots dug deep on the road to a promotion. It had been all but settled.

"I'm serious, Cos. What else is there? Why not?"

"What about Beth?

I just assumed that I could bundle up Beth along with any of our furnishings and our memories and our things, and just leave. Beth who was born and bred in this town, who has built everything she knows around it, who has created a life upon it - and graciously included me. And I thought that, what?, I could dig up her roots, plant her somewhere else, somewhere new with a simple "my sister's dying"? And, of course, I thought it would all be fine.

"Beth'll be fine, Cos. Beth…" I should have said something about how great Beth and Cosima get along, though of course they'd barely seen each other, barely knew each other, despite having me in common.

Beth didn't want to know my family, didn't want to go out into an unknown world (America, the greatest of all unknowns and wild cards) , certainly not for my hardheaded sister, with whom she could barely have a conversation without spending hours afterwards picking through every sentence, dissecting them for meaning in the same way Cos must dissect frogs (or whatever it is that an evolutionary developmental biologist does; I never really have the courage to ask). I thought it would be fine, having that purpose, bringing Beth along: it would all be totally, completely fine.

 

But I didn't want to think about it anymore, didn't want to second-guess and relive my greatest regrets. Instead I heard a familiar sound, drifting in from the kitchen like a forgotten memory: Beth making breakfast. There was quite a cacophony of sound, pans crashing against the stovetop, cabinets banging open, a whisk hitting the edge of a glass bowl, something clattering against the floor. Something special was being made, created, crafted - possibly a crepe, because crepes are, in fact, special - and today Beth would want to cook something special.

It was my birthday.

I leaned in the doorway for a long moment, just watching her move, watching her be the Beth I remembered. Two birthdays ago, she'd done this very same thing - pancakes that year - and I remembered there being a smudge of powdered sugar on her forehead, a perfectly imperfect off-center cornucopia of white. And how she'd laughed when I licked my finger to rub it away, joking about the "newest skincare product."

I couldn't quite shake the thought, like a naggling worm, that there's something very distinctly wrong with recalling a happy memory and feeling nothing.

Beth absently wiped her hands on a dish towel, hanging on the handle to the oven door just below her waist, watching the crepe as it browned on the pan before her. Her back was straight, her posture perfect, almost like a trophy - strange thought, considering all the things she's won in her life, the things she'd done before she left Toronto, before she chose me over everything else.

I tried to imagine what it would've been like to sneak up behind her, wrap my arms around her waist, nuzzle into her neck. She'd have smelled like powdered sugar and strawberries and cucumber shampoo. She'd have smelled like Beth, my Beth.

She caught sight of me, lurking in the shadow of the doorway, still in my tanktop and a pair of her old running shorts, my hair a wilder mess than usual - most likely sticking up on one side in a gnarled zero-gravity knot - she leaned against the counter and said, "Good morning, beautiful."

My stomach clenched, and I felt the distinct urge to dry-heave. That's not the kind of thing you often have an urge for; it usually just happens. But I have to admit: I had an urge. And I thought to myself, You can do this.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize profusely (and will continue apologizing until the end of time, probably) for the first-person, but _Gone Girl_ is written in first person, and I really wanted to keep this as close to Gillian Flynn's style as possible. This will be long. And it will be slow-going. It's a long book, and I'm reading it as I go. Though hopefully after this chapter, the others will be a bit shorter and faster.


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